Page 63 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

“When you live as long as we do, you have the time to learn a lot. I like to cook, so here we are.”

If I had an extended lifespan, what sorts of things would I pursue? It was an interesting thing to think about.

The food was as good as it looked, and I tried a bit of everything before making conversation with Jace.

“I don’t want to pry,” I began, “but can I ask about your parents?”

He nodded, but sadness flickered in his eyes. “Sure. I asked about your family. I can tell you.”

“You don’t have to if it’s too painful,” I added quickly.

He put his fork down and shook his head while wiping his mouth with a napkin. “No, it’s all right. It happened a hundred years ago.

“I was still young, twenty-five years old, and full of life. My aging hadn’t paused yet, so for shifters, that’s still really young. We’re basically still kids at that age. My father was the alpha, and he and my mother had just had Shayna a couple years prior, so she was still a toddler. It was 1918, World War I was just winding down, and we had lots of hope and excitement for the future. It’s kinda hard to describe if you weren’t there. Anyway, Dad had the pack running really smooth, and we were really well off compared to others. I thought I had decades before Dad retired and I would take over as alpha, so I really wasn’t even thinking about it at that time.

“My parents had gone to see a silent picture in St. Louis about two years prior. While they were there, Dad saw an automobile for the first time and fell in love. Out here in Missouri, things took a little longer to take hold; plus, Crestwood was pretty rural, so cars were still fairly rare. He vowed then and there to own one. Once the war ended, he went ahead and put an order in with a new local dealership. It was delivered in the fall. The whole town came out to see. I was so excited. I’d never ridden in a car. It was this really crazy moment, like the future was coming to Crestwood.” He smiled sadly as his eyes grew distant.

“Jace, I’m sorry, you don’t—”

“It’s okay, Kirsten. I’ve actually never told the story. Not out loud. I think it’ll make me feel better.” He sighed and rubbed his hand over his jaw. “Mom and Dad and everyone checked the thing out, walking around, touching the metal and tires. It was so cool,” he chuckled. “Mom handed Shaya to me and hopped into the passenger seat. Dad patted me on the shoulder and told me to hold down the fort while he took her for a spin. He told me he’d let me drive it later.

“Dad turned the hand crank and started her up, got in the driver’s seat, and took off. He didn’t have much practice. The dealership had let him take their floor model around the block a couple times when he’d put in the order—that was the extent of training he had. Up until then, he’d ridden horses, and he’d had some practice with Waylan’s dad’s steam tractor. I think that was part of the problem. He didn’t have enough skill with the machine yet.

“He told us all he’d be back in an hour.” Jace poked at his food with his fork. “When that hour passed and they still weren’t back, one of the pack betas hopped on a horse and took off down the road Mom and Dad had gone down. In those days, all the roads around here were just packed dirt. If you were lucky, there might be some gravel. Well, he came riding back thirty minutes later, white as a ghost. I still remember the way he called out to me. I had Shayna with me, but I could hear the terror in his voice, the horror. I handed my baby sister off and ran to meet him.

“They’d been going around a corner, heading up into the mountains. One of the tires got too close to the edge, and the dirt gave way under the weight of the vehicle. The thing tumbled like a stone. Rolling over and over. It had to have happened fast.” A tight fist clenched around my heart as tears welled in Jace’s eyes. Part of me didn’t want to hear what came next, but I let him keep going.

“Mom, uh…” He cleared his throat. “Mom broke her neck. Dad was… well, his head was busted up so bad, we couldn’t even have an open casket.”

“Dear God, Jace,” I whispered and reached over to put my hands over his. “I’m so sorry.”

There was nothing I could think of to make it better. It had happened so many years ago, but losing someone like that must have been devastating. And for a shifter, with their extended life span, that wasn’t really that long ago for Jace. Nana had only passed a few weeks ago, and that had been a slow but inevitable loss. Regardless of how hard she’d fought, the last six months, I’d pretty much known what the outcome would be. This? Losing both parents in such an awful way, on the same afternoon? My heart wept for him.

He nodded, wiping his eyes. “It’s okay. It was the shock of it, you know? It’s part of why I was so out of my mind that night with Dorothy. We’d had the funerals, but now I was saddled with all this responsibility. Raising my baby sister, being pack alpha, being an orphan… it was all so crushing. The night I was sworn in as alpha, there was a big party. Part celebration, part mourning. I drank. A lot. It takes quite a bit to get a shifter drunk, and by God, I wanted to get drunk. I left the revelry and headed off into the woods, shifting and running. Just running as fast as I could go.

“Eventually, I came upon Dorothy and that smell. The smell of magic? Something that I’d never scented before but instinctively knew? It messed me up. That’s why I approached her. Wanted to take some of it. I was out of my mind and had no clue what I was doing. All I could think was, if I had even a little of what she had, maybe I could bring my parents back. I know that’s impossible, that even with the strongest magic, death is death, but that didn’t stop a dumb kid from dreaming.” He let out a heavy breath.

“I walked up to her, spun her around, and kissed her. A drunken, slovenly kiss. I can still taste it, the acrid yet sweet taste of magic as it danced across my tongue. She’d been right in the middle of some kind of spell or ceremony. She yanked my head away and pushed me to the ground.” Jace shrugged helplessly. “And that was the night she cursed me.”

“Jace, I think this puts more truth to my theory,” I said, rubbing his hand. “It was only a kiss. The punishment truly didn’t fit the crime. I think that maybe when you kissed Dorothy, she may have had some sort of vision. Saw the future and knew what was coming. Maybe that’s why she made it so that you wouldn’t be with anyone else until I came along. She knew you would be the tether to one of her descendants. She maybe didn’t know it would take a hundred years, but…”

We both laughed, the sad atmosphere broken.

“Man,” I said, “you’re really old.”

Jace laughed even harder, the unshed tears drying in his eyes. “For a shifter, I’m middle-aged. How dare you? Besides,” he added, “now that your magic has manifested, your aging will slow, too. You’ll live longer.”

I hadn’t thought about that, and my mouth slowly dropped open.

Jace laughed again. “I guess that hadn’t occurred to you?”

“Not for even a second.”

It made sense now why Nana had forced Dad and her husband to move every few years. People would start to question why she was aging so much slower than her husband. Explaining that you were a witch was much more far-fetched than explaining you were a shifter. Jace and his kind were part of the collective consciousness now, no stranger than any other race. They were mysterious, yes, and backward in some ways, mostly due to their long lives and holding onto older traditions. Witches were so rare, it would be difficult to get someone to understand that they were, in fact, real.

“Does that mean I need to live in seclusion?” I asked. “I don’t want that. The thought of moving every few years sounds exhausting.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Jace said. “Not if we explore the possibility of you actually being my mate, and me being your tether. You wouldn’t have to be alone, not if you had me and the pack. I’m sure you’re a great teacher,” he added. “We have a school in town. You could teach there. Or, you could stay at home. Study, enjoy your hobbies, whatever you want. Not that I mean you can’t have a career—I’m a feminist, women can do what they want, don’t get me wrong. What I meant was that you have options and…”

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